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4. Legislation

Introduction

There are two areas of legislation that have significant implications for community heritage groups.

Data protection is concerned with ensuring that information held about living individuals is kept and used appropriately, and covers both how you look after your own members’ details and the information that is held within archive collections.Your collections will also inevitably contain items protected by copyright, and this has important implications as to whether you should make copies or digitise items for publication or inclusion on websites.

Both are complex areas and potentially problematic, and if disregarded can have serious consequences thereby damaging a group’s reputation. For this reason, this part of the accreditation scheme is the only one that requires participation in formal training, offered by the West Yorkshire Archive Service.

About Nowthen

Nowthen.org makes available community heritage collections and offers support, networking and guidance. You can explore West Yorkshire through the experiences of the people who live here, add your own story, listen and share memories and view photographs. Access the network area to promote your group and discuss with others. Make use of our resources and accreditation scheme to support your groups activities and projects.

About WYAS

The West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS) exists to preserve the local heritage of historical documents and to help members of the public make use of them. The Service has offices in Wakefield, Bradford, Calderdale (Halifax), Kirklees (Huddersfield) and Leeds. Anyone interested in the history of West Yorkshire, who would like to discover what records have survived, is welcome to visit any of our offices. WYAS hosts and supports the development of the nowthen.org site.